The Lost Labyrinth of Lazaitch

"The Lost Labyrinth of Lazaitch" is a type of game I miss in newer IF. It's an oldschool fantasy text adventure. Period.

No deep metaphors for our pressing modern times, no personal symbolism about overcoming your deepest fear, no soul-searching tale about spiritual enlightenment.

You are Alaric, a Hero. Somewhere to the East is a Magic Book of great importance. Obstacles and enemies are between you and said book. Overcome them and get the Book. Period.

Aaah, good times!

Be sure to bring your brain, because we all know Heroes need all the help they can get in that department, especially with puzzles like in LLL. Not too hard, but enough to get you scratching your head.
This way, they are both funny and engaging, not frustrating. Just remember the 3 IF commandments: Read, Explore, Examine.

Also bring your imagination, because on your way you will see beautiful and horrifying sights. May you be the first to live and tell the world about the troll-bowl or the Red Tower.

Full disclosure: I playtested this game.

This is part of a long series of Adrift games which generally consist of big maps, lots of NPCs, magical abilities, knights, wizards, etc. with traditional adventure puzzles. There have been some exceptions in the series (like a timed game and a small casual game) but this game is in the main vein of the series.

In it, you are on a quest to a magical labyrinth. To get there, you must first explore a forest, a strange and unusual world with things like (big spoilers) (Spoiler - click to show)cars and asphalt, and finally the labyrinth itself.

There are usually 4-6 puzzles available at each moment, with not a lot of red herrings, so it's not too hard to solve most puzzles by experimentation, especially as there are a lot of hints given. On the other hand, each area has a puzzle or two which would be pretty hard to figure out without help. Sometimes implementation is lacking, like a (Spoiler - click to show)puzzle piece where (Spoiler - click to show)PUT PIECE ON PUZZLE or PUT PIECE IN PUZZLE don't work but (Spoiler - click to show)FINISH PUZZLE does.

Since each area has a puzzle that's hard due to either being a tricky puzzle or rough implementation, this game can take a long time to finish. I used a walkthrough for most of it. If you do do so, I'd recommend stopping once you get some spells and enter the labyrinth, as there's a fun segment that isn't as hard as the earlier parts and which would have been more fun without the walkthrough.